Prologue

 

‘As knights, we must protect the weak.’

 

That was the one thing my father always told me before heading to war.

 

He claimed that the sole purpose of our family, a lineage of knights, was just that.

 

In that case, I must have been a disappointment to him.

 

Although I was born the eldest son of a noble family of knights... I had never once felt the desire to protect anyone.

 

I had no intention of becoming a knight in the first place.

 

No matter how much praise I received from those around me, the whole notion of being a knight seemed foolish to me.

 

The more I missed my grandfather, who had died in the war, and the more I worried about my father, who came back injured, the more convinced I became that those who sacrificed themselves for others were fools.

 

What was so great about being a knight? What was so noble about the honor that it became the sole purpose of our family?

 

Why should we protect others?

 

When you have something to protect, doesn’t it become your weakness? Doesn’t it just mean dying in someone else’s place?

 

That’s why I had always believed I would never sincerely protect anyone.

 

I didn’t want to live a life where I sacrificed myself for someone else.

 

But when I met you—someone who should’ve been my enemy.

 

When I saw you, broken and weeping after losing everything to my family.

 

And despite all that, when I saw you struggle and fight for years just to survive...

 

...I could hear the sound of my resolve crumbling.

 

“...Don’t go.”

 

“...”

 

“...Don’t go, Kylo.”